THE WANDS SHARE NEW EP ‘FACES’, A COSMIC BLAST OF 60S INDEBTED PSYCH

Danish psych outfit The Wands are set to release their new Faces EP on Fuzz Club in September this year. Following on from their previous LP The Dawn it’s an astounding collection of hallucinogenic psych that’s deeply endowed to the 60s Nuggets-era rock and roll and eastern-tinged acid-rock.

In this scene, you have neo-psych bands, and then you have The Wands: a band that isn’t neo-psych as much as it is truly psychedelic. London In Stereo described their sound as “enthusiastic acid-rock being more musically ambitious than many a standard garage act, banging home just how critical an influence the late-Sixties has been on all-ages indie”.

Their music swells with exhilaratingly rich and expansive sound as they conjure lysergic soundscapes, but unlike other revivalists, they show a bold and different take on traditional ‘psych’—making you wonder if this is how psychedelic music was meant to be all along. Whilst the groovy fuzzed-out guitars, otherworldly solos and nasal, tremulous vocals echo a tripped out ode to the 60s the otherworldly cosmic swell of synths and organs propel it with a contemporary and all-encompassing vigour.

Hailing from Copenhagen, the band was created by lifelong friends Christian Skibdal and Mads Gräs in Spring 2012. Since then, they’ve carved out a unique place within the European Psych scene. As with others in the European Psych scene, the spirit of The Wands emerges from the 60s and 70s—but it’s their ability to reach into the psychedelic heart of those musical time periods and make something their own without resorting to blatant plagiarism that is simply unparalleled by other bands.

The Wands reached cult-like status with their very first EP, ‘Hello I Know The Blow You Grow Is Magic’ from late 2012, which paved the way for the release of their self-titled debut album in the fall of 2014. At this point, The Wands had grown from the love child of guitarist and founders Mads and Christian to a full-fletched band. Joined by Thomas Brandt (The Woken Trees) on drums and Kristoffer Hvidberg (Kiss Kiss Kiss) on bass, the album received widespread praise for its authentic and honest sound.

Since then, The Wands have extensively toured Europe, playing prestigious venues and festivals such as Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia and Eurosonic Festival in Holland along the way. This sheer amount of live performances has made The Wands a band that is well known for an impressive display of musical ingenuity and craftsmanship on stage – “their live performances have quickly established them as one of the most exciting prospects to emerge from the scene they find themselves associated with.”Drowned In Sound.